Getting Shameless with Emmy Rossum

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We talk to the star of Showtime's new series about her character's strengths, working with William H. Macy and sex scenes with her Dragonball costar.

By Eric Goldman

One of the best new TV series to debut this season, Showtime's quirky, funny and involving Shameless has found Emmy Rossum (Mystic River, The Day After Tomorrow) impressing one critic after another, with her bold and knowing performance as Fiona Gallagher. The oldest of six siblings, Fiona has taken on the role of de facto parent to her younger siblings, because mom has left town and her dad, Frank (William H. Macy) is a perpetually drunk degenerate.

I recently spoke to Rossum about her work on the series, which is a remake of the popular British series of the same name. We discussed what makes Fiona tick, the specific family dynamics at work on the series, the casual nudity the role requires and more – including the amusing fact that her love interest (and partner in an exuberant, kitchen-set sex scene in the first episode) is played by her Dragonball Evolution costar, Justin Chatwin.

IGN TV: It must be great to see the positive reaction the series is getting.

Emmy Rossum: Yeah, anything you care about, you hope that people embrace it and like it and appreciate it. The interesting thing is that people have appreciated even the minute details that we put into the show. Like the squeaky toy that everyone steps on in the hall. Or how we fill the milk bottle with water. Little things that we do on the day and the director and I say, "Well, no one is every going to notice this, but it's good to have the real thing." And then people really comment on it and write about it online and write to us about it on Twitter. It's fun. It feels good.

Emmy Rossum in Shameless

IGN: Because of Frank's situation, not only has Fiona taken control of the family, but to me, she's really the center of the series and the heart of it. Do you see it that way?

Rossum: The show kind of centers around Fiona, although a lot happens in the surrounding areas around her. I feel like she's the one sane mind amidst all these clowns, almost. And so it's interesting, especially to center a show about dark subject matter around a young woman. I think for any character you approach, you approach it from how they grew up and their backstory and everything and I think that looking at the typical structure of a family of children of alcoholics, you have the one who is the rebel and the one who is the kind of joker and the one who basically picks up the pieces – and that is who she is. That is how she functions. I mean, yeah, she does kind of become the rebel at night time. When there's a void, it will be filled. And I think that as the oldest and as the one who clearly has her nose the grindstone, no messing around, that is the role that she has adopted.

IGN: But as you mentioned, she does have her wild side.

Rossum: Well, I feel like for her, clubbing and sex in that way is almost like a release and a compulsion, because she leads this life that is way too grown up for her young years and is really, in a lot of ways -- although she doesn't acknowledge it emotionally to herself -- very unfair to her. And she could have all this hostility towards the people around her who have made her pick this role and pick up all these pieces, but she doesn't. I think that she kind of gets out all that youthful energy in club dancing and just trying to screw this guy, who then is like, "I like you!"

IGN: Had you seen the original when you were cast?

Rossum: No. I auditioned three or four times for this and before my final audition, they put a test deal in place and if you get the part, you have to take it. It's not like, "Oh, I don't feel like it anymore!" So with that, Mark Mylod, our director, who also was part of the original team from the British series, said, "You need to watch the sexuality and make sure you're cool with that amount of exposure." So I watched the initial sex scene in the kitchen in the British version. But that's all I've seen. And I watched it on mute, because I didn't want to hear the accents.

IGN: Just so you could…

Rossum: Visually see what [happened]. I didn't want… I know Anne-Marie Duff's representation of the character is so loved and so fantastic, from everything I've read about it, so I was almost nervous to be exposed to that in any way – that it might color what my natural instincts would be.

IGN: So was there any hesitation with the sexuality and the nudity?

Rossum: No, not at all. I mean, I'd never done it before, so for the first episode, I was very nervous. But showing these kinds of characters… People expose so much of their inner workings and their emotional life in sexual experiences that I felt like it would be very telling to show the way she has sex. You know, you can tell anything from anyone. The way you eat or the way you walk… the way you have sex… So I really wanted to show that. So yeah, the first time that we did that in the first episode, I had a few beers. But now it's funny. We're in our eleventh episode and it's like I'm totally uninhibited. And I only noticed it because there was another actress who was in state of undress for the first time on our set [recently] and she was like, "You're just so comfortable with yourself. How do you just take your clothes off like that?" And I'd never thought about myself like that before until someone said that to me. And I was like, "Yeah, I am comfortable now! Good for me!" [Laughs] I was like, "Take off your clothes! This is great!" It was so bizarre.

IGN: I have to tell you, it's hard to think of a time when two actors like you and Justin went from doing a project like Dragonball to something as wildly different as this.

Rossum: Oh my god, all the Dragonball fans are like, "Bulma and Goku are doing it!" We've been buddies since then and really close friends, which is funny, because we have this natural chemistry when we're doing these roles that we don't really have to work that hard for. But we've never had it before, so it just seems like something inherent in the way the material functions with the two of us, that we're just like, "Oh, yeah!"